Summary Of Amusing Ourselves To Death By Neil Postman

In Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, he argues that the old print-based culture's precision and complexity overwhelm the present focus on TV's simplicity and speed. Postman organizes his book chronologically, so the reader first sees the positives of the print era then the negatives of the transition into a world of visual screens. Through this sequence, he illustrates the difference between the abundant product information in the 1800s with the entertainment of television commercials. He compares the focused, favorable audience of the past with the current hyperactive television viewers, which the politicians notice and replace complex plans with single sentence quips. Towards the end of the book, he deeply analyzes the adverse futures

In order to back up his claims about the past sanctity of advertising, Postman favorably discusses its true purpose and paraphrases a famous orator: "Advertising [...] was to convey information and make claims in propositional form. Advertising was, as Stephen Douglas said in another text, intended to appeal to understanding, not to passions" (Postman 59-60). Ads need to pass off applicable facts for customers to consider any type of product with old, wordy ads. Companies do not have the convenience of covering for product quality with amazing, irrelevant pictures in black and white pamphlets. During the momentous switch with television commercials, Postman describes the consequences of beautiful pictures and famous people covering for the lack of product presentation: "These tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them" (Postman 128). By refusing to make logical assertions about quality, businesses fool consumers into relying on emotions. People try to fulfill unreachable fantasies with baseless products only to fall short often. These passionate personal beliefs trickle towards public discourse mostly through politics. All types of people assure their friends that massive

Orwell's view requires a totalitarian government to suspend information: "The state, through naked suppression, would control the flow of information, particularly by the banning of books" (Postman 138). Censorship and limited access to "the flow of information" last as critical attacks on the intelligence of citizens. Based on the past, an overreaching government blocking books seems more plausible than technology engulfing people in an endless abyss of amusement. In the final point of the book, Postman notices that America becomes exactly what Huxley observes about citizens in Brave New World: "They did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking" (Postman 163). People seek entertainment so constantly that they lose sight of reality and cannot discover any problems surrounding them. As more people no longer think, the world falls further down into the pitfalls of technology. Although Orwell's vision induces more fear for citizens of any country, Huxley's warning lives with Americans today. But people do not acknowledge their ever increasing confinement in entertainment and decreasing state of importance in public